Voices of Experience: How New Design Thinking Is Changing the World Of Market Research

Highlights from TMRE 2011

On Tuesday November 9th, our CEO Matt Warta gave a presentation at The Market Research Event regarding the evolution of new technology in the qualitative research world. Matt was joined by Katy Thomas, PhD, who was representing one of GutCheck’s earliest and best partners: (r)evolution.

During the session, Matt asked the audience to write their comments on two key topics:

1. What are the most significant barriers that keep people from exploring new technologies for their qualitative projects?

2. At next year’s TMRE conference (2012), what are the new technologies that audience members will have started to explore.

The responses from the attendees were fascinating, mainly because the comments were so diverse. Here are some highlights…

BARRIERS TO IMPLEMENT NEW TECHNOLOGY

>>The number one barrier noted for keeping people from exploring new technology was simply the need to get familiar/comfortable with it.  Over 21% of audience participants noted that response.

>>After familiarity, nearly 11% mentioned either security, quality concerns, getting moderators familiar with using it, and the perceived loss of capturing emotional/non-verbal feedback online.

WHAT’S NEXT TO EXPLORE IN 2012

>>The only answer mentioned frequently was simply “I don’t know/unsure”.  To us, that shows that there is still a significant amount of education needed to help qualitative researchers understand al of the options and how to use them.

>>Several respondents did mention exploring mobility with qualitative research efforts in the coming year, as well as concurrent qualitative interviews online.

>>While there weren’t clear winners, we loved some of the focused responses.  Here are some of the specific projects on the horizon for our audience members in 2012:  Bulletin boards with multi-media integration, Skype for face to face IDIs, concept exploration/optimization in multiple international markets, video ethnography, and hybrid in-person/online qualitative studies.

Thanks to all of the audience members that took the time to provide us with feedback. We think that 2012 will be a pivotal year for growing new/online technology into qualitative research and look forward to see all of the innovation to come.

What barriers do you find to implementing new technology in market research? What technologies will you be exploring throughout 2012?

Our July power user profile: (r)evolution

One of the best things about having a new product is seeing how users make it their own. Many product companies have a tough time thinking outside of their own little dirty fishbowl, and can have a narrow view of how customers will use their product. We are not immune to this. In the real world, we are amazed at what our customers come up with that we had never envisioned. (r)evolution is one of those companies who continues to help shape how we see GutCheck working.

The (r)evolution team has done many projects with us, but what stuck out the most was how they chose to test 10 product concepts in two days. They did 48 one-on-one interviews in 48 hours! (And yes, they were on Team Edition – no one researcher should be subjected to that many IDIs in so-little-time.)

The coolest thing about how (r)evolution did their research wasn’t their speed, though – it was the fact that they actually had their in-house graphic designer sitting in the room with them. So as moderators kept track of respondent feedback, when consistencies emerged the designer would incorporate them into a new version of the visual concept for testing with the next group of respondents. So they were able to effectively go from rough concept ideas to their winning concepts in just 2 days! Further quantitative testing proved this out. You can check out the case study with them at our website if you are interested.

(r)evolution introduced us to the idea of on-the-fly analysis AND product iteration happening at the same time. This helped them save a lot of time and it gave us a good look into how our users are determining the kind of product GutCheck is – driving it to be something we hadn’t even imagined.

Thanks, (r)evolution, and happy chatting!

Want to be a power user? Let us know how you’re using GutCheck or how can we make GutCheck work better for you. Leave us a comment below, let us know on Twitter, or drop us a message on our community page!